


The Bracelet

by celluloidbroomcloset



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3663534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloidbroomcloset/pseuds/celluloidbroomcloset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the episode Town of No Return, Steed gives Mrs. Peel a gift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bracelet

Emma watched as the smoke curled from Steed’s mouth. First in ribbons around the edge of the cigar, and then in small puffs as he drew it away from his lips. The puffs wavered in the air and dissipated as they ascended to the ceiling of her apartment. He drew in another breath, his mouth around the blunt end of the cigar forming a perfect small O. His inhalation was deep and measured as his chest rose, sucking the smoke in and releasing it once more in a long, almost audible breath. The cigar balanced in his spread fingers, curling its own wisps out as he lowered it again.

Emma had never known that watching a man smoke a cigar could be quite so arousing. She was beginning to have very distracting thoughts about how he had used that mouth not so long ago, caressing her much as he now caressed the very tip of the unlit end.

It did not help that the fire in her apartment was warm, that the rain pattered on the window outside, and that they were both taking some much needed time to themselves at the conclusion of a short but rather tiring case. Far too relaxed, far too comfortable, after the intensity of their case. She shifted on the floor and winced at the pressure on her injuries.

She never knew that her body could hurt in so many places at once. A cursory examination in the shower disclosed at least five different spots where mottled bruising was already visible, and several more places where she was likely to ache for days. The fight in the underground bunker was nothing short of terrifying; the night spent in a freezing cold inn involved little sleep. Emma looked forward to being in her own bed, amid her own possessions, without the danger of possible murder and mayhem hanging over her. She wanted to sleep. The last thing she needed was the distracting sensuality of John Steed smoking a cigar.

She rose to get a brandy, more to remove her thoughts from his mouth and hands than desire for more alcohol.

“Another drink?” she asked, picking up Steed’s glass as she rose.

“Please.”

Emma padded over to the sideboard and poured out two more measures of brandy – a drink she rarely took, yet found she was keeping about for the times when Steed appeared at her door. As she turned back to the room, she caught another distracting vision of her partner.

Steed reclined on the floor in front of the fire, his head on one of her couch pillows and his bare feet stretched out before him. He looked almost domesticated, like a big hound just in from a hunt taking his ease on the familial hearth. 

Emma shook the idea right out of her head. Domesticity did not agree with her, and she highly doubted that it agreed with him. Too independent, too apt to be off at a moment's notice for such things as home and hearth. And yet...there was something in their relationship, nascent as it still was, that was different even from the few she’d experienced before. That he was comfortable lying on her floor with his shoes off and his collar unbuttoned seemed to speak of an intimacy that she did not like to consider because it could not possibly last.

There had been some debate when she began working with Steed about whether or not their personal relationship would get in the way of professional duties. He’d said that it really did not matter what they did behind closed doors; so long as it didn’t interfere with day to day operations, it was no one's business but their own. The Ministry had nothing to say on the topic, though Emma presumed that agents did not normally date their partners. There had, however, been a tacit agreement to avoid further entanglement until they knew better how they would work together.

Now they knew. The affair at Little Bazeley was not their first case together, but it was the one she’d been most involved in. It required two days away from London and the exercise of all the skills she possessed, or acquired in her Ministry training. The dangers of the case did nothing to change their relationship, however; in some ways it even heightened it. The attraction between them from the moment he entered her apartment was almost too palpable to be believed; she spent the entire day attempting to resist it. When Steed returned to his room at the inn with a full bottle of brandy and asked her if it wasn’t time she went to bed, any concept of remaining aloof while on a case had gone right out the door.

Emma shivered as she recalled that night – only last night, she realized, yet it seemed a week ago at least.

“Cold?” asked Steed, sitting up as she returned to the fire. “Fire's quite warm; my toes are roasting.” 

He knocked the ash off his cigar and tossed the remainder into the burning embers.

“Your brandy,” she said.

“Thank you, my dear. Ah! Marvelous.” He smacked his lips. “A perfect day all around, wouldn’t you say? I’m to be congratulated.” 

“You?” Emma arched an eyebrow.

“I did fight several very angry and well-trained men while you struggled to best the vicar.”

“He was a rather strong, young vicar.”

“True, true.” He smiled at her and his grey eyes shone in the firelight. “You were wonderful. First rate, Mrs. Peel.”

“Thank you, Steed. And you.”

She raised her glass to him.

“Which reminds me,” he said. “I have something for you. Where did I put my coat?”

He rolled to his feet and found the coat draped neatly over the back of her sofa. He dug around in the pockets until he found what he wanted and returned to the fire. 

“For you, Mrs. Peel.” 

The box was small and flat and popped open with a clasp. Nestled inside was a silver bracelet. Simple and plain, but very attractive. 

“What does it do?” she asked, holding it up to the light.

“Do?”

“Yes. Shoot poison darts? Radar tracking?”

Steed looked a little annoyed. “It adorns your wrist.”

Emma almost blushed. Here he’d bought her a present and she thought that it was another Ministry toy. She took the bracelet from its cloth nest and turned it over. 

“It’s engraved!” She could just make out little letters on the inside of the band.

“Oh, that’s…that’s just…something I thought...”

He cleared his throat and shifted around, his hand on the back of his neck as though he had a pain there. Then suddenly he stood up and carried his full glass over to the sideboard.

“Ice, ice,” he muttered. 

Emma squinted at the little letters, small and difficult to read in the silver and room's the relative dark. She leaned forward to better see by the firelight, finally able read the phrase cut into the length of the band.

"To a Noble Knight, From Her Trusty Steed."

“Steed!” she said, turning around.

He was fumbling about with ice cubes, but did not drop them into the glass. Putting ice in brandy was as anathema to him as wearing white socks with black shoes.

“It’s…rather silly, isn’t it?” he said to the ice bucket. “I thought so, but the man at the store would insist that engraving was only a bit extra, and … I’ll take it back.” 

He dropped a cube on his bare foot and made a noise that sounded like the suppression of an expletive.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind.” Emma slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. “I love it. Thank you, Steed.”

Steed glanced over at her. “Oh, well then, you’re…you’re welcome. Even if it is silly.”

He returned to the fire with his glass and sat down beside her, a somewhat embarrassed look still on his face. 

“It looks good on you. I hoped it would.” He cleared his throat again. “Just a…thank you. For services rendered.”

His eyes met hers. Perhaps it was the firelight; perhaps the brandy had gone to her head, but she thought, for the most fleeting moment, that she saw something new in those grey irises. A vulnerability she had never marked before, as though in that moment a single word would change everything between them. Then he blinked and whatever she saw was gone. He reached for his brandy glass.

“How do you feel about your first complete mission, Mrs. Peel?” 

“I rather enjoyed it, all things considered.” 

“Even being saddled by the local vicar?” 

“Even being forced to awaken at the crack of dawn to attend school.” She looked at the bracelet as it sparkled against her skin. “A noble Knight. Steed, it's lovely."

“It reminded me of you.”

Emma smiled at the simple silver band. It was the first present he ever bought her. Flowers, chocolates, the usual, but never before an actual present, that she could wear or keep. It was, oddly, like being given a part of him. Steed was far from an emotional man – that is, he felt deeply, but he concealed it well, defended his feelings with every weapon in his rhetorical arsenal. Emma understood that better than he might have realized. She knew that any gift from him was not given lightly. 

He kissed the back of her hand, his mouth soft and wet from the brandy. Emma reached forward and pulled on his open collar until he leaned towards her. Their lips came together in a gentle, chaste kiss. She resettled on her crossed legs, mouth opening so that she could taste him, and let him taste her. She perceived the warm tang of brandy and cigar – not unpleasant – and beneath that a heady, delicious flavor that belonged to him and him alone. She made a move to unbutton his shirt, but his hands captured hers and held them against his chest.

They lay on the carpet before the fire, trading long, languorous kisses, the way they did before they ever went to bed together. His hands rolled in her hair; hers caressed the defined shoulders beneath his silk shirt. He was intoxicating; he made her light-headed, made her forget the barriers she’d built, so impenetrable that she never believed any man would surmount them again. It never felt so right to kiss a man, with no awkwardness, no shame, no uncertainty; just a supreme awareness of him, his mouth, his taste, his scent, the vague rasp of stubble against her cheek, the hands caressing her scalp, the body that responded to hers with such perfect synchronicity that it frightened her. If he had asked her to run headlong into traffic at that moment, she would have. She might have hated him for overcoming all her well-placed guards, if she didn't enjoy it so much.

Finally coming up for air, Emma smiled when she saw the glazed expression on Steed's face. He stared up at her, long eyelashes – long for a man – shadowing his cheek. The same vulnerability reflected again in his eyes, but this time he did not blink it away. He only looked at her, for a moment unconcealed, more naked than he’d ever been before her. In that moment, and it was only a moment, she believed that she could love him. 

"Emma," he said in the deepened tone she believed was hers and hers alone

Her fingers brushed against his lips.

“My trusty Steed,” she said.

“Always." 

His arms came around her and he brought her back down to him. Yes, she could love him. It was becoming difficult not to.


End file.
